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Sunday, 31 July 2016

After my rather paranoia-fuelled experience concerning The Angry Birds Movie, I thought I was past the point of feeling like a given film
actively had it in for me. Of course, we have at least 3 films this year featuring official nemesis of the blog Kevin
Hart, so I’m maintaining that there’s someone in this world who has a grudge
against me personally. This is not helped by the almost gloriously insipid tag
line "Saving the world takes a little Hart and a big Johnson", which triggers my lame pun allergy something chronic. But
hey, even with my misgivings about Angry Birds, I still walked away from that
film somewhat pleased that I at least watched it. Am I likely to get such a
revelation on this one? Chance would be a fine thing, but quite frankly, I’m in
that kind of mood where I’m willing to give a chance to prove itself. This is
Central Intelligence.

Thursday, 28 July 2016

Well, time to get into what is undoubtedly the most hotly
contested release of the year, and we’re off to a good start as it seems that
no matter what side you fall on, there’s backlash. You’re either a misogynistic
Neanderthal because you see the gender-swapped cast list and sense something is
wrong, or a PC agenda-pushing feminazi because you’re agreeing with the
gender-swapped cast on principle and for no other reason. So nice to see the entire Gamergate debacle
encapsulated into a single film reaction; you know, where everyone comes across as a complete idiot. Now, this is all
generalization that usually fuels such arguments concerning gender roles in
media, so I don’t give any points to either side. How fitting that, in a year
where we had a film called Civil War, we have a fandom civil war brewing over
this little piece of cinema. And to make matters worse, when dealing with a
film this divisive, the worst place to be is on the fence. Let’s dig in and
I’ll explain. This is Ghostbusters.

Wednesday, 27 July 2016

The weirdest aspect when it comes to actors decide to become
filmmakers is when they go back to their acting gigs. This is especially true
when the films that they made aren’t all that good. I’ve gone on at great
length about the many issues concerning Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner,
which everyone else seems to be unwilling to acknowledge, and while I give Ryan
Gosling’s Lost River its fair due, that’s only after the many weeks of Fridge
Analysis I undertook to understand what the hell it was on about. I may like
being overtly critical but a message about Detroit’s already well-publicized
housing issues shouldn’t be this
obtuse. Sure, they’ve been in films since, but those were definitely two of
their wider-known products of late. So, with those still fresh in my mind,
let’s see how they do when they are under the helm of the guy who most recently gave us the
oft-maligned Iron Man 3. This is The Nice Guys.

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

With every passing season, there is a video game movie
released to cinemas. Likewise, there is also a flood of people declaring it the
worst yet because it seems that the Internet filters out any semblance of
perspective and leaves only the bile. While there is some precedent to the
notion, as video game adaptations have a pretty failure rate with only one or
two notable exceptions (and even then, those are often contested), I will try
and let the film speak for itself on this one. I’ll be forced to do so anyway,
as Warcraft is a franchise that I have very limited experience with. I vaguely
remember playing Warcraft III in a few LAN parties in high school, and of
course World Of Warcraft helped give us one of the best South Park episodes
ever with Make Love, Not Warcraft, but other than that I’m going into this as I’m
sure a lot of filmgoers are: As a casual observer. But even with that in mind,
is this film as bad as its already prominent reputation has decreed? This is
Warcraft.

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

I make it a point not to bring up other critics when I
discuss films... mostly, and usually not by name. I’ve been on record saying
that Australian film critics, collectively, need to get their shit together as
they seem to need a lot of work when it comes to prioritizing certain titles
over others. And then there was that one time I openly said fuck you to Clem
Bastow because of her views involving the film The Intern, and while I stand by
what I said, I don’t actually mean any ill will towards any other person.
Honestly, the main reason why I don’t bring up other critics by name (unless
I’m praising the hell out of them, of course) is because most of them not only
have a lot more credibility than me when it comes to dissecting films but also
have a far larger audience as well. I don’t like tarnishing the reputation of
people who actually have a reputation
to tarnish, nor do I like diverting the few readers I have away from me. But
even with all that in mind, there is still one guy that I have been really
itching to talk about, and yet have also been trying to put off discussing on
this blog. In the annals of film criticism that don’t habitually exist on
YouTube, there is one name that is universally recognized as being one of
the... well, ‘worst’ is going a bit far, but definitely one of the less
respected critics out there. Yep, I’m talking about the white whale of the
critical world: Armond White... and why I hate his guts.

Now, there have doubtless been many, many, many articles discussing this man and how he is an absolute
mockery, and most of them bring a lot of similar points. For those not in the
know, White is a mostly print-based critic whom has grown a reputation for
being a contrarian; basically, he seems to go against popular opinion when it
comes to more popular films, even more so than his peers. To put this into
perspective, let’s go over some of his more controversial stances on some
pretty big-name releases. When the finale to the Harry Potter series came out,
and critics and audiences fawned over it (myself included; I see it as a great
conclusion to a series that I and many others grew up with alongside the
characters), White was not so impressed. To quote the man himself: “Now that
the Harry Potter series is over, maybe the truth can be realized: This has been
the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises.” In a world where
franchises are the cinematic M.O. in Hollywood, that’s a pretty big statement
to make. I mean, I get not liking it, but there is such a thing as
over-reaction when it comes to these things. I should know; I do it more than
enough in my own reviews. When the Marvel Cinematic Universe was just starting
to pick up steam with The Incredible Hulk, and fans were a tad iffy on that
effort anyway, White described it as “the crappy summer blockbuster Marvelites
probably deserve.” Putting down the fans, eh? Well, that’s one way to bring my piss to a boil. And in case this makes him come
across as a negative nancy, he has
given a positive mark to certain films. Films like the 2010 version of Clash Of
The Titans, where he said that “[Director Louis] Leterrier certainly shows a
better sense of meaningful, economic narrative than the mess that Peter Jackson
made of the interminable, incoherent Lord of the Rings trilogy.” And just in
case that didn’t cement things for you, he also called the few-lived-to-remember-it Wayan brothers film Little Man as “a near-classic comedy”.

So, this guy has the trappings of a higher-tier internet troll. Anything else we should know about
him? Well, he’s also become known for being rather boisterous when it comes to
face-to-face time with certain directors. He became web-famous for a while
when, at the 2013 New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony, he yelled at 12
Years A Slave director Steve McQueen, called him “an embarrassing doorman and
garbage man” and told him to “kiss [his] ass!”. White vehemently insists that this
didn’t happen, but the number of outlets that have covered it (and the fact
that he seems to be one of the few people saying that he didn’t say all that) would suggest otherwise. Now, I may be an
uneducated kid from the suburbs of Sydney, but even when I didn’t like The
Quarantine Hauntings and had a chance to say it to the face of the filmmakers,
I had enough tact to not make a scene. Don’t get me wrong: I often have
daydreams about taking directors like Terrence Malick by the collar and yelling
at them for how bad their films are. However, one of the caveats that I thought existed in the difference
between YouTube critics and print critics was that the guys on print were
usually less impulsively vitriolic. Or, to put more simply, they know not to be
a dick in public.

However, I have no problem with either of these parts of his
work ethic. I mean, I’ve made it a yearly tradition to highlight where my
opinion and those of the critical masses differ, so his ‘contrarian’ views
don’t bother me too much. I mean, if you actually look at his Rotten Tomatoes
score, he actually doesn’t differ from popular opinion as much as the Internet
may have you think. He may champion Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, but he
also described the Twilight Series as “an ADHD sedative.” That quote alone kind
of warms my heart to the guy just a little bit. What also helps is that, for
him to be a true contrarian, he would have to disagree with the public for its
own sake. Instead, going by how he breaks down films, he has a very hyper-analytical
and somewhat politically-tinted approach where he puts utmost focus on films as
a means of delivering commentary, be it social, political, socio-political or
otherwise. While I consent that he may focus on the subtextual ramifications a
little too strongly, he still has his
own voice that serves its purpose in the overall critical scene. As for his
real-world antics... honestly, like a fair few of his fans, I like renegade
artists. I like Kanye West for his complete lack of a filter and occasionally
bursts of insanity, while others hate him for the same reason. Seeing someone
in my personal field of interest who a) is this well recognized and b) is this
demonstrably outspoken is kind of inspiring. He claims to have taken
inspiration from New Yorker writer Pauline Kael, who herself was denounced for
her less than popular opinions, and while I may not agree with either of them
all that much, I can see why there would be inspiration coming from either of
them.

So, you’re probably wondering why this article is titled as
it is, if I am willing to defend this guy as much as I am. Well, while I may
not hate him for the superficial reasons that so many others seem to, I have a
very definite problem with something else he has a habit of doing. Weirdly enough,
this also ties into a few of my issues with the critical scene as a whole,
something that I see Armond White as a major embodiment of. When he was a guest
on the Filmcast podcast to discuss the then-recent release of Inception,
something that he considered to be far inferior and more juvenile than Michael
Bay’s Transformers series, there was a certain line of reasoning that caught my
attention. In the After Dark edition of that same episode, he and the hosts got
to talking about the state of film criticism (as it is in the U.S.) and it’s here where the fuse gets lit for me.
Armond White hates people like me. He
hates how uneducated plebeians are being listened to as intently as people like
him, proudly boasting about his formal education on the matter. He sees it as a
sign of not only the critical scene being damaged but also Hollywood as a
whole, and he puts the blame squarely on regular filmgoers who put their money
forward to such projects. In case you missed last time I talked about this, I
absolutely hate it when critics make judgement calls like this. There is zero reason why the blame should be put
on the audience for liking/disliking a certain film, and whatever reason may
exist is probably in it of itself a judgement call. Not that the commoner audience
is entirely to blame though, as he also believes that legendary critic Roger
Ebert destroyed film criticism as we know it, thanks to his work on At The
Movies. Okay, I don’t agree with Ebert all that much either, but dude! All of
this is coming across like the kid on the playground with a new toy, who then
gets whiny when everyone has their own because he isn’t so special anymore. It
is the elitism and snobbery and holier-than-thou attitude that I have come to
despise when it comes to film criticism, and I have zero patience for it. He
may have its place in the world, but if he’s sensible, it’s way the hell away
from me.

So, in conclusion, I don’t hate Armond White because of his
differing opinions on popular films. I don’t hate him because of his openly
dickish behaviour towards certain filmmakers. I hate him because he represents
an antiquated and almost fascistic mindset that says only properly educated
people like him are allowed to have their opinions listened to, and everyone
else are just making things worse. There may be points here and there where
this notion aligns with my own disdain for the critical landscape here in
Australia, but where I have some self-awareness about the food chain, this guy
vehemently fails to realize where he is. What makes critics like Roger Ebert as
lauded as they are is that, as the times changed, they shifted to meet the new
audience. White doesn’t care about the new audience; he just wants things to be
like they were in the good ol’ days. Time to grow up, Armond, in more ways than
one. You’re not sitting in your ivory tower any more; you're sitting in its rubble.

Thursday, 14 July 2016

It’s Adam Sandler time again. hooray. I know that I’m
running the risk of looking needlessly contrarian, but I stand by what I’ve
been saying all this time. I still have the same love for Sandler’s older work
that I had when I was a kid, and while his newer work is definitely several
flights of steps down, I fail to see what makes it so bad that it warrants the
scorn that’s been regularly thrown his way. Well, mostly fail to see: Along the same lines of maintaining opinion,
That’s My Boy is still one of the single worst films I’ve ever sat through and
last year’s The Ridiculous Six still sucks on rye bread. And it seems like
we’re going forward down the road Ridiculous Six has lain before us, as this is
the second of the scheduled four
films that Happy Madison is co-producing with Netflix. I’d argue that taking
him off of cinema screens is definitely a step in the right direction, but keep
in mind just how many people are watching shows and movies through on-line
streaming; he’s still going to nab an audience. Which includes me this time
around, as I take a look at his latest... well, ‘effort’ is a bit of a stretch,
but we’ll only see just how much of a stretch once we get started. This is The
Do-Over.

Wednesday, 13 July 2016

Whether it was listening to the original book on cassette
tapes, watching the 1999 TV film version with Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire
Cat or even playing Alice: Madness Returns on Playstation back in high school,
I have a very ingrained appreciation for the story of Alice’s trip down the
rabbit hole into a world where pretty much nothing makes sense. As much as the
more logical parts of my brain would like to say otherwise, this appreciation extends
to the 2010 film by Tim Burton. It’s one of those rare films where I
legitimately don’t care about the plot inconsistencies, of which there are
plenty to be found there, and I’m willing to bet that my already-admitted fanboyism for Burton’s work has got something to do with it. Nevertheless, I
liked the first film which means that I was probably the only person on Earth
who wanted to see a sequel to it, which I also was... initially, at least. Am I
going to defend this film as well, or am I going to join the crowd? This is
Alice Through The Looking Glass.

The plot: Some years after her last adventure into
Underland, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to find that the Mad Hatter (Johnny
Depp) is distraught about his family, whom were killed by the Jabberwocky long
ago. Wanting to cheer him up, Alice goes into the domain of Time (Sacha Baron
Cohen) to steal the Chronosphere, a device that will let her go back in time
and save the Hatter’s family. However, it seems that time is not so easily
re-written and Time as well as the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) is catching
up to her.

In the six short years since the original film, Mia
Wasikowska has gone from an Aussie anomaly trying to make her big break to
working with the likes of Jim Jarmusch and Guillermo Del Toro. Words cannot
express how nice it is seeing an Australian actor doing good in Hollywood, especially since that extra experience serves
her well here. Moving beyond the wide-eyed slothfulness of her previous outing
as Alice, she manages to translate the supposed strength and smarts of the
character into the film proper this time around. Depp gets a bit more emotional
heft than before, but the Hatter was never one of his stronger performances to
begin with so it doesn’t translate too well on screen. Bonham Carter is as
shrill as ever, Anne Hathaway as wispy as ever, Matt Lucas still checks out as
the Tweedles and Andrew Scott’s glorified cameo as the psychiatrist, even with
how short it is, leaves a definite impression. And then there’s Baron Cohen,
and I’ll be honest, I’m glad to see him in proper form again. He may be getting
a little too much mileage out of his French accent, but he does admirably at
conveying the haplessly regal demeanour of the personification of Time in this
film.

The trailer for this film is incredibly misleading. It gives
the impression that the creators might be going for a more
psychologically-tinged American McGee approach to the story of Alice, something
I was initially quite excited about. Alas, the scene featuring Andrew Scott’s
manic doctor lasts about as long as it does in said trailer, and it doesn’t
even crop up until a little over halfway through the film. That is not to say
that the film itself doesn’t start out well, though. On the contrary, as it
appears that new director James Bobin and returning screenwriter Linda
Woolverton have gotten a better grasp on the source material than last time.
Sure, it starts out on some loud and blaring misogyny courtesy of returning
buttmonkey Hamish (Leo Bill), but it ends up ringing a little truer since Alice well and truly asserts herself as a person
worthy of such scepticism. That may seem a little harsh, but trust me: Seeing
him trying to snark her down to size after the very Pirates Of The Caribbean
opening action scene did make me
sympathize with her a lot more than the first time round. Then we get into the
story proper involving the Mad Hatter and… okay, please take my opening spiel
into account when I say this: This might be one of the better interpretations
of the connection between Wonderland and the real world that I’ve seen in one
of these adaptations. The way it connects the very irrational notion of proving
the Hatter’s delusions right, as opposed to convincing him of anything else,
with the epitome of permanency and inevitability that is Time and how it ends
up taking all of us shows that they have a definite understanding of the utter
illogic that Wonderland (or Underland in this case) runs on.

This then leads into time travel shenanigans, and as much as
I want to lambast any film nowadays that tries to involve such a plot, initial
impressions suggest that these filmmakers are aware of the inevitable
conclusion of such a venture. Hell, the fact that Alice trying to change the
past is framed as the irrational notion that it is is a point in favour of the film. It does end up
going down a lot of similar directions as other time travel stories,
particularly The Butterfly Effect with the emphasis on past actions and the
scene set in an institution. However, I am willing to be fair to such stories
because, in yet another notch on my subjectivity bedpost, it plays into the
reason why I watch films in the first place. Back when I talked about Love,
Rosie, I mentioned the film About Time being recommended to me by my
psychologist. What I didn’t mention
was why that film specifically: Because I have a very serious issue with
dwelling on past mistakes, and that film helped me get through that aspect of
my thinking. With this in mind, I have no issue with these stories as I know
that, even with their prevalence, they are still useful to some people out
there. That is, so long as the story is told well… and here is where things
start to slip. While the film initially starts out promisingly enough, it
starts to buckle under its own lack-of-weight around the halfway point. This is
largely a result of the film not only having very little sense of direction in
terms of its overall story but also because it does end up dragging out its
ultimate lesson for far, far too long.
We get it: We learn from our past mistakes to become the person we are today;
Star Trek did a far better job of illustrating this same point in about half
the time with the TNG episode ‘Tapestry’.

So, what about the visuals? I mean, even for people who couldn’t
stand the first film (of which there are an understandable many), there was
still plenty of praise to be had for the film’s visual aesthetic. To be fair,
those comments had some rationality to them, as the 2010 film is probably one
of the best examples of using a digital backlot to craft a world for the film
to exist in, right up there with the film version of Sin City. Well, in
contrast to the writing deficiencies, I’d go so far as to say that the visuals
are actually even better than last
time. As much as I got a real kick of the Burton style garishness of the
original, it did end up making the world of Underland feel a tad small. Insert
your own joke about cakes marked “Eat me” here. With this one, it starts really
strong on those grounds with the aforementioned opening scene set on a ship
beset by pirates. From there, once we get beyond the somewhat bland Victorian
décor, Underland shows a definite upgrade. From the Hatter’s house to the
oceans of time, right down to the Grand Clock itself, there’s a real sense of
world-building as well as scope to be found here. I’d call this a shallow
victory, given how the rest of the film doesn’t really hold up alongside it,
but I can see some legitimacy in watching films purely for visual splendour.
Yes, I have railed against photographically obsessed filmmakers in the past
(Terrence Malick, Baz Luhrmann, etc.) but I’m not opposed to the idea overall,
and this is such an instance… possibly.

All in all, as much as I seriously want to champion this
movie, it’s not good. While it shows signs of improvement and more considerable
effort being made, it ends up succumbing to a lack of direction and an
inability to carve out its own path, instead just following what other films
have done before it to abrasive degrees. I’d still argue that there are
elements worth seeing here, but with how much of a letdown it ended up
becoming, I can’t bring myself to recommend it. It’s worse than Point Break, as
what good this film has going for it ends up dragging down its overall value;
PB, by virtue of an overwhelming lack of effort, doesn’t do such a thing.
However, with that said, this film at least started out promising something
good; The Huntsman: Winter’s War, on the other hand, had zero chance of being good and doesn’t have nearly as many
redeemable factors in it.